Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Verified Voting Foundation, and
the Election
Protection Coalition (of 60+ member organizations, representing a
combined membership of over three million Americans) want to get the
word out about our free web-based election incident tracking tool
called the Election Incident
Reporting System (EIRS). The Project brings the experience of
voting rights groups together with the technical groups. It's live now
and past election day.

Calls from the public and volunteers to the toll-free hotline at
1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) are answered or dispatched, if needed,
to trained attorneys and technologists organized through TechWatch to respond
rapidly to help voters to vote and have their votes counted as
intended. The system also enables journalists to be put in touch with
real voters who have real problems.

EIRS
data is available from now to beyond Election Day, for scholars,
policymakers, the press, and the public for documentation of the
election that may be useful for post-election litigation, post-election
legislation, and/or just the curiosity of people interested in the
election process.

EIRS also offers easy automated resources for finding polling place
locations, through the 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1 866-687-8683) hotline and http://www.mypollingplace.com/.
More than a third of Florida primary election hotline calls were for
this basic information, that enabled citizens to vote.

EIRS also has a brand new "do-it-yourself" form as an
alternative for people reporting an election irregularity who do not
want to talk with operators at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (+1 866 686-8683), or
prefer the 24/7 convenience of the web form, from anywhere in the
world. Although these web reports may not come to the attention of
anyone in time to help in this election, they will be included in our
total documentation for the 2004 Elections. Please help us test the
form now. Answer "test" to the first question, and then give it a
whirl.

In addition, Verified Voting Foundation developed the Verifier, a web-based
tool that provides drill-down maps permitting voters to find the voting
technology used where they vote, as well as contact information for
election officials, absentee and early voting availability, and much
more. Some of this information, previously only available commercially,
came courtesy of Electionline.org, while the rest resulted from the
efforts of dozens of volunteers. VVF welcomes input on missing and
incorrect information and will soon offer a free download capability
for all the public data contained in the maps.

Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) also offers guides to assist voters
in casting votes successfully when they face new voting technologies at
the polls. VVF's Voters' Guide to
Electronic Voting provides voters with easy-to-read information
about the voting machines used in their local polling places and
pointers about how to prevent voting technology problems and vote
successfully. There's also an urgent warning
to voters using touch screen/DRE voting machines.

"We've pulled together in one convenient place a bunch of information
that was theoretically available to voters, but really hard to come
by," said VVF Executive Director Will Doherty.

"We're doing what we can to let the public know about the problems
with and alternatives to paperless e-voting," commented VVF Nationwide
Coordinator Pamela Smith.